Private jet pictures aren’t from Davos ‘climate change conference’ this year

By | May 27, 2022

Pictures purporting to show private jets parked up at the “Davos 2022 Climate Change conference” have been shared hundreds of times on Twitter, as well as Facebook.

There are several problems with this claim. First of all, the pictures in the post are not from the most recent meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF), which is held annually in Davos, Switzerland, and ran in 2022 between 22 May and 26 May. The event’s name is frequently shortened simply to “Davos” followed by the year, for example “Davos 2022”. 

A Google image search reveals that the first picture is not from any Davos event and actually dates back to 2015, when a large number of private jets landed in Las Vegas ahead of a boxing match. The picture was used in reporting by a number of news outlets, including USA Today, Insider and TMZ

The second picture of parked private jets was taken in Davos, but in 2019—not 2022 as the posts suggest. Several news outlets, including the Guardian, the Times and Insider reported on the picture, as climate change was a major focus when the conference was held in January 2019.

The post’s description of the Davos meeting in 2022 as a “climate change conference” is also inaccurate. While the topic of climate change did feature on the Davos 2022 agenda, it was amongst a broad range of discussions such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the global economy and health.

We have written many times in the past about the WEF as the organisation is often a topic of online misinformation, particularly with regards to claims surrounding “The Great Reset”. 

We have also written before about online misinformation surrounding private jets at climate conferences, checking a similar picture which claimed to be of planes parked at COP26 in November 2021 but was actually taken in New Orleans during the Super Bowl in 2013. 

Photo courtesy of Yoann Donzé

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